Episode 151: How to Reinvent Yourself with Ryan Tansom

Sherry interviews Ryan Tansom of Life After Businesspodcast about the experience selling of his business. They discuss the process and pain he went through and the way those tough experiences spawned his new business. He’s built a second act aimed at helping entrepreneurs make their exit a success.

Episode Transcript

Rob Walling:

Welcome to this weeks episode of ZenFounder. Two announcements before we get started. The first is that this week is the last week to sign up for the current Zen Tribe. If you go to zenfounder.com/zentribes you can get more information but Zen Tribes are groups of 6 to 8 entrepreneurs who commit to meeting weekly for eight weeks. Sherry leads you remotely via, I think it’s Zoom these days and offers the place, people, time, and guidance to tackle the unique struggles and challenges that you experience as an entrepreneur. So if you feel like you need some community with other founders, like you’re out there floating on your own, and you need to connect with other folks and kind of be guided into that next phase of entrepreneurship, now is the time to head to zenfounder.com/zentribes

In addition, the book is coming out very soon. The book is The Entrepreneurs Guide to Keeping Your [inaudible 00:00:53] Together. How To Run Your Business Without Letting It Run You. And the book is about learning how to master your stress, dismiss your fears, and rapidly accelerate your business growth. So it’s a lot of what we talk about here on ZenFounder and a lot that we haven’t talked about. It’s so much of the knowledge and wisdom that Sherry and I have learned from interviewing founders, being founders ourselves, and from Sherry’s deep knowledge of what it takes and the stress that surrounds being a founder. So if you haven’t signed up zenfounder.com/book will get you to the book landing page. I would highly encourage you to check it out because we’re going to be launching in the next few weeks. There’s a print version, there’s going to be a kindle version, audio version, all the things you want and you want to be first on that list to hear about it.

And finally, this weeks episode of ZenFounder is Sherry interviewing Ryan Tansom of The Life After Business podcast. It’s a great interview and I hope you enjoy it.

Sherry Walling:

Well Ryan it is so great to have you on the show. Thanks for taking the time to talk with me. And we met at Rhodium Weekend last fall, which was a great conference. Both you and I were part of the speaking docket that year and unfortunately I didn’t get to hear your talk. But I got to talk with you enough to know that I want to talk with you more. So it’s been fun to get to know you a little bit since we are both Minneapolis based.

Ryan Tansom:

Yeah, I’m glad I’m on the show.

Sherry Walling:

Yeah! So I am excited to learn more about your story and talk about the process of reinventing yourself a couple different times as a professional, even at a young age. So, maybe we could start out just by giving us the kind of the short version of these two companies that you have been deeply part of. One you sold and one you’re now starting from scratch. So what’s the quick road map of your life of a professional so far?

Ryan Tansom:

Keep it brief, right? My dad, it starts actually with him because he was an entrepreneur, started multiple companies, and the imaging path, which he started in the mid 90’s. He actually mortgaged our house and bought a semi truck full of copiers. He had 30 days to sell them. Well, needless to say he did. Over the next 10 years he grew a 20 million dollar business, had about 100 employees. Selling copiers and servicing them.

I worked in and out of the family business my entire childhood and growing up and I just totally got the taste of being an entrepreneur. What ended up happening, right around the financial crisis I decided to join full time. Around that time there was a company called Global that was doing this national roll up with a bunch of equipment dealers in different cities and with the 20 million and 100 employees we were kinda right in the sweet spot and they decided to pass on us. So that was kind of a big “Aha” moment for us because we found out that here’s this business that we’ve got that provides a lot of cash flow and a lot of fun stuff and it’s not transferrable, not worth anything.

So we spent the next six, seven years completely turning around the business. Doing a lot of different operational stuff, employee stuff, and built out the outsourced IT and software side of the business to kinda become that full technology provider that we knew we needed to be. Ended up having couple different circumstances that led us to sell the business in 2014 through a local competitor.

Since then I had to recreate myself because I found out that I’m professionally unemployable because I don’t like to work for other people.

Sherry Walling:

You and me both brother.

Ryan Tansom:

Right. I’m a bull in a china shop when we’re having committee meetings, with 10 people, and no one can make a decision. What ended up happening is I partnered with my partner now, who had an investment management firm. Then I went back and said, “You know what? There was a lot of challenges with that whole exit.” Everything from the tax planning, to who, and where, and how we could sell it to for how much. So him and I have created the firm that I wish I would have had where we do growth and exit planning.

Sherry Walling:

So, there’s a lot I want to talk to you about but let’s go back though to when you were a kid, if we could just for a second. This story about your dad mortgaging the house to buy a semi truck full of copiers, some people might see that as kind of a big risk, that’s a pretty scary move for someone who has a house and a family. How do you think about that risk your dad took way back when.

Ryan Tansom:

It’s interesting, he always said that we would have a pool he just never said if it was going to be at the apartment complex or at our house. So I think I look at it a lot differently now because I’ve in turn done the same thing. I think the risk as an entrepreneur is less risk in your head because you feel confident in your abilities to do it. As an outsider looking at what he did I think a lot of people would think he’s crazy but now being in the same position, have taken the original risk myself, I think it’s less risk in your mind because you kind of have eyes wide open when you’re going into it.

Sherry Walling:

You have a sense of where those copiers where gonna go.

Ryan Tansom:

I didn’t at that point. He had a feeling that he could figure out how to sell all of them. I’m not as passionate about copiers as he was so I don’t think I would have had as much success but I think it has to do with having passion. Whatever your truck load of copiers is in your world, I think it’s having the passion that’ll actually get you to actually accomplish that piece.

Sherry Walling:

What has risk looked like for you? You’ve done this yourself now. Sold one company, started another one. So what have been your moments of big risk and how have you thought about them?

Ryan Tansom:

That’s’ a good question. It was interesting as I was sitting at the trenches with my dad, ’cause even though I did not start the company like he did, we were in the trenches at the last handful of years together, side by side. The risk of keeping it going and knowing that was my future legacy, I did not have the complete attachment that he did because it was his baby even though I kind of adopted it halfway through. So I think I looked at that risk differently because it was almost like where you see the future vision of where your life’s gonna go. And the risk of that vision not happening is kind of terrifying. That’s kind of like an emotional risk of where you want to go versus the financial risk that my dad had. Like, if for some reason something would’ve happened, he would’ve lost a lot more financially than I would’ve. But the future vision that I had painted for myself was at risk at any given point.

Now risk is more of trying to charge through and break through a different industry and it’s taken financial risks as far as building the business. We’ve invested in software and relationships. Some that have worked, some that have not. I think it’s a little bit more of the mechanics of the risk now that it’s my business.

Sherry Walling:

It feels less emotional and more mechanical? Is that one way of summarizing that.

Ryan Tansom:

I’d say it’s more emotional and more financially because I’ve got all the financial risk into it now versus before where it was more the emotional risk. Where now it is truly more baby because it’s all the stuff that you’re working your ass off to do everyday.

Sherry Walling:

You have got all the skin in the game.

Ryan Tansom:

100 percent. So does my wife.

Sherry Walling:

Yeah? How has it been for her to go from one version of your professional life, that was family business, pretty well established, having going for a long time, to the sale then to starting something new, which sounds like is going super well but might have some more insecurities than the first business?

Ryan Tansom:

She’s a saint. Let’s put it that way. In one month we sold the business, I took the proceeds, bought a house and a truck because they said we’re not gonna make any money for a while and we’re not gonna be able to buy anything. Then invested the money into the business and hit the ground running all while trying to have a kid. So she was just like, “I don’t care what you do just give me a child.” So we have two, thank God. So I over committed. I think one of the biggest differences is, we actually were talking about it a couple nights ago, it was I have completely lost the ability to shut it off. Where before, I think, the fact that it wasn’t my baby from birth, my dad birthed the company, I was able to shut if off easier on the weekends and stuff versus now where it’s just literally become a part of the thoughts in my head constantly.

Sherry Walling:

And she’s cool with that?

Ryan Tansom:

You know, it’s just constant work. We talk a lot about it. If we didn’t communicate there’s no way it would work out but we over communicate and she actually does a really good job at understanding what I’m trying to accomplish for us. I think if this extrapolated 20 years we’d have some serious issues but the whole purpose of this is to create a different life for ourselves.

Sherry Walling:

You’ve taken some of the disorientation, some of the pain points that come with the sale of a company and used your own pain and the experience of selling a company to really become the vision for what you’d like to do better in the world and I think that’s really neat. To sort of take these things that were really hard and use that very directly to help other people have a smoother process. What were the things that really stood out for you in the process of selling the company? That were just like, “Hey, we’ve got to figure out a way to do this better”.

Ryan Tansom:

It’s not knowing your options at all. We were a mid-market company that a lot of investment bankers would have loved drooled all over and they don’t tell you what it’s like handing off your company to someone else. If you were to sell your company to a private equity firm, there’s a very good chance that they gut it or they do something to hit a rate of return. We sold to a strategic competitor, which by the way they are an amazing company and there’s a lot of amazing people there. But by the nature of the sale there’s a lot of redundancies with infrastructure, with services, with people. And you gut it in order to fold our company into theirs.

The ramifications of that I was completely not really aware of. I knew I was going to have to go work for somebody. I wouldn’t be the head honcho anymore. So I spent three or four years building up the managed IT services. And it was a crazy amount if painful failures, and hires, and customers, and all this stuff throughout the whole growth of that. It’s all based in software. So it’s all coded scripting, and processes and procedures, and teamwork that when we sat in the acquisition meeting and their IT Internal Engineer was like, “Yep, and we’re just gonna shut those servers down.” I just looked at him like, “No way.” It was like he just took my soul and ripped it apart. I literally went home that night and was like, “Don, no chance I can do this”. ‘Cause it was the ramifications of not knowing what the outcome would be like for the culture, the people, and your customers and all that stuff that you’d built based on who bought you.

Sherry Walling:

Absolutely. You spend all of this time crafting something that you’re proud of and often based on people’s ability to trust you and your history of doing right by people, whether that’s your customers or your employees. To hand that off, hand off all these little babies so to speak, and just not know for sure that they’re going to be cared for in the way that you would take care of them or the way that you would do things.

Ryan Tansom:

Every buyer’s got a reason for buying your company, whether it’s for the intellectual property, or some code, or if it’s for the people, or for cash flow, it’s some reason that they’re buying your company. Knowing that reason will help you figure out if it aligns with what your reasons are for selling the company, whether yours is financial or passing down the culture, the future legacy of where you want your company to go. You have to align those two in order to actually walk away happy.

Sherry Walling:

So how do you help do that differently in your new business in solidity?

Ryan Tansom:

I think the biggest challenge what we found out, it kind of unfortunately stems from financials. I was never a financial guy but being forced to answer a lot of questions to the bank and really getting the data. You find a way to ask and find information. Information allows you to make better decisions. I’ve got five key pillars that in my speech that I give. One is what kind of lifestyle do you want to live. What is it that you want to literally do on a day to day basis? Is it hang out with people, is it to lead, is it to create, is it to sell? Once you figure that out, how much does that cost? We did a lot of work trips where 15,000 dollar flying fishing trip to Canada is no longer a write off. So the things that you like to do that is funded by the company, you really have to understand what that lifestyle is that you want.

The second pillar is knowing your numbers. How much is your company worth? It’s worth different to different buyers, but how much is it worth? By the way, Uncle Sam comes in and usually takes like half. That’s a big deal. So when you’re running your numbers and say, “Okay, If I sell this company can I maintain my lifestyle? If I liquidate this can I somehow have enough money to passively not have to go back to work?” ‘Cause otherwise you’re selling it and then you’re going to have to go get a job again. I think once you have that foundation, then you can say, “Okay. What are the ways that I need to grow my company to create more value?” Whether it’s adding products or services or contracts.

That’s the third key pillar, which is value building in the right ways to increase the value of your company. Then the fourth one is, what are all the exit options available to you? What exit option you choose will impact your timing, how much you get and how happy you’ll be based on what happens to your customers. So, if you were my general manager, whether you sold to someone internally, or you sold to a third party, or sold to your employees, gifted it to your kids. There’s so many different ways and you have to be able to back into everything that we just discussed. The last pillar is, what is the best team to have on your staff, or at the table with you? I found out the hard way that not all professionals are as smart as their nice suits look.

Sherry Walling:

So you have these five pillars. It all sounds very logical. You walked me through this and I’m like, “Yeah, okay good. What’s your lifestyle? What do you want? How much does that cost? How do you get your company built up where it has the value to provide the numbers that you need to live the lifestyle that you want? What are your options?” It all makes sense. But I know that this is not that easy for people. We did a podcast together over on your podcast about some of the emotional entanglements that people experience. But this all sounds like a really nicely laid out plan. It makes great sense. Where does it break down for human beings?\

Ryan Tansom:

Way before all five of these. This is once you got your head on your shoulders. This is after Sherry talks to them. It’s way before this because you have to understand who you are and what makes you, you. And what you like because otherwise you can’t even do any of this stuff. You can’t logically plan ’cause we all do things emotionally then justify logically. I love leading and I love creating. When we sold our company I no longer had anybody to lead and I had no longer a platform to create. That was literally terrible. It was horrible. Knowing that that was important to me is huge. I actually just interviewed on my podcast this gentleman named Bobby Martin. [inaudible 00:17:16] interviewed him too. It was called the 26 Million Dollar Regret. He was literally miserable after he sold. I can relate a little bit to that because you don’t realize that you sell your soul if you don’t know what makes you, you and what makes you happy. If that makes sense.

Sherry Walling:

Yeah, you have to have a sense of what you need to be well in the world. I’ve talked to lots of founders about the same sort of question or problem. Sort of recently, Clay Collins was on the program. Kinda like the day after he announced that he was stepping down as CEO of Leadpages. It just happened to be scheduled that day. But he jumped right into a new start up because he knew that he needed to keep building, and keep intellectually engaged, and keep having challenges to chase down. Most founders are like that. Certainly the timing of how long you take between one start up and another start up. It matters. Not everybody is able to do what Clay did or what you did, which is really finish and pivot, and just go. Some people need different timelines.

Ryan Tansom:

Well, it’s interesting because I think for me it was a little bit out of survival of my sanity. I didn’t know who I was otherwise. I was this guy that was recognized in the industry for really doing some cool stuff with the managed IT services and getting phone calls from vendors across the US, all this cool stuff and then all of sudden, literally irrelevant. And then I’m just like, “Okay, well I don’t have enough of an identity without my company.” To be identified more as a serial entrepreneur, that in itself is an identity. So instead of Leadpages or a company, per se, being your identity, it’s more of the masters of all of them. I think a lot of people, unless they’ve gone through a couple exits, they’ve only got that one platform to tie their identity to. Or you get into the serial entrepreneurs and it’s their whole work of all their companies that’s their story. So I think it’s a little bit easier. I don’t know if that kind of relate to the story.

Sherry Walling:

Yeah, and I do think from a human development perspective that middle adulthood, like 25 to 50, that’s building time. Most of us are building a family. We’re building a career. We’re building a nest egg. We’re building things. It’s like the busy ant period of human life. To be, I’m not sure how old you are, but to be 30-ish. Between 30-40, 25 to 40, whatever. And all of a sudden have no building responsibilities or very little building responsibilities. It’s very antithetical to human development. We’re kinda not really built to have that much downtime at that point in our lives.

Ryan Tansom:

I called it phantom anxiety. I went from like 350 emails a day to we woke up, told our 80 employees that we sold the company, and literally didn’t get another email. It’s just like, “Okay … “. You’re still looking down at your phone like, is the bank there? Is my big customers there? Are my AP, my AR, all these people that are constantly needing me are no longer needing me. Like I said, it’s phantom anxiety ’cause the anxiety shouldn’t be there technically.

Sherry Walling:

Yeah, you’re done. But it’s hard to celebrate that when you’re also still longing to be making a difference and building something.

Ryan Tansom:

Right. There’s an institution out there called Halftime. I’ve interviewed a couple of the founders on my show and it’s going from success to significance. Sometimes going to that significance is you don’t have to sell your company to get the liquidation event to get all this money to go sit on the board of a charity. Sometimes you realize that you can change more peoples lives with your company because of the employees that you have direct access to, the vendors, the platform to be able to do other things. It’s maybe another way to look at your relationship with your business and how you can use your business as accomplishing other goals, as you reinvent yourself while you own your company instead of doing it afterwards.

Sherry Walling:

That kind of reminds me of your third and fourth pillars. This idea of, how do you maximize the value of your company both financially but also in terms of where it lines up with your personal values. The kind of difference that you want to make in the world. And then how you select exit options or consider exit options that are most in line with those personal values. So, if your game at this point in your life is about contributing or doing something that has social benefit and social wellbeing for other people, then how do you leverage your company towards that goal?

Ryan Tansom:

It’s so interesting because I do believe that a company is a blank canvas for an artist. Where the people you hire, the things you do, the things you create is literally like you create it and it’s a direct reflection of you. Are you familiar with B corporations like Patagonia or Tom Shoes?

Sherry Walling:

Yes.

Ryan Tansom:

They have a direct social impact. If they sold to someone that went away, what would that do to the owners, to the people? Honestly Sherry, it comes down to self awareness. That takes time usually. It takes people like yourself or other people to push people to think that way. Out of the logical quarterly reports and new product launches and stuff to think about intrinsic values and doing that while you’ve got a stable infrastructure is a little bit easier because it’s less emotionally daunting than sitting at home thinking to yourself all the thing you wish you would’ve done prior to that.

Sherry Walling:

I agree with you. I think it really starts with that self awareness, self knowledge. Really knowing your distinctive. This is what I’m about. This is what I give my time and energy to. This is what’s important to me. But on top of that I still think it takes some guts and courage. ‘Cause it’s one thing to start a business and mortgage the house for the semi truck full of copiers, I love that image. But just to go all in and say, “I’m taking a risk. I’m gonna make this thing.” Then it’s even another layer to say, “I’m not only in it for my own well being but I’m gonna figure out how to bring other people along with me.” In whatever capacity that is, whether that’s being a really intentional employer who really values the well being of your employees or whether that’s having some sort of social mission like a B corp does. That’s a whole other level of gutsiness.

Ryan Tansom:

I think it’s gutsiness that a lot of entrepreneurs fail at because it’s very difficult to look. ‘Cause you don’t know the answers and there’s no way to quantify. You can look at a balance sheet go, “Yep, killed it.” Versus, “Okay, who am I?” There’s no right or wrong answer to that so it just takes a way different process and it’s not really tangible and measurable sometimes. It’s gutsiness to be vulnerable. I think the combination of egos that get in the way but also, you’re as the entrepreneur and owner and founder, you’re looked at to the person that has all the answers. So you put on this facade that you totally have all your [inaudible 00:24:33] together. When realistically you need to continue to grow and explore and that’s difficult when you got other people staring at you all the time.

Sherry Walling:

Yeah, how do you do that? Because I have my answers for that but I think you’re just epitomizing away why ZenFounder exists. Because people are always looking at you all the time, to have a space, whether that’s a therapy office or whether a coach, or consultant, or a tribe, or a group where you can really focus on our own growth. Seems like such an important and life saving part of life for an entrepreneur.

Ryan Tansom:

I completely agree because for example, when I was growing the technology service at Imaging Path it was like having to cheer lead all day long about the vision of the company, where we’re going and getting people to run through walls takes a ton of effort and a ton of emotional energy to get everybody on board. To always be preaching. What if you go home one day and you’re like, “Hm, I’m not really sure if I totally jive with that vision anymore.” What do you tell everybody? Just like, “Hey by the way, shifting gears,” or “Something’s different”. So you’ve almost committed yourself into this box, if that’s the case. I think what happens is people feel like they’ve got some sort of commitment to themselves and to their people where shifting and reinventing themselves in that scenario is some sort of negative perception or negative.

Sherry Walling:

Yeah, you can’t change your mind. You have to sing the company song the whole way through.

Ryan Tansom:

Right, exactly.

Sherry Walling:

I’ve also seen it go the other way where you have a leader who does a lot of shifting and pivoting. You lose people the other direction too. It’s too fast and lean and your team is like, “What are we doing now?” They don’t know how to answer customer service calls. They don’t know what to implement because there’s not clarity. I think the challenge of finding the strength within yourself to be clear headed and committed to a course of action but then also know how to change well and trust yourself when it’s time to make a change. That’s a level of wisdom and nuance that it’s not easy to come by and most of us don’t walk in the door with those skills intact.

Ryan Tansom:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). It really just comes down to what’s important to you, which takes work. Like you just said, it takes a lot of courage. If you know what’s important to you then it shouldn’t be a surprise if you slightly pivot a little bit ’cause it should align with what’s important to you. That’s personally and with the business. And again if the business is a reflection of you, it should make sense, I guess.

Sherry Walling:

Yeah. In your transition process you mentioned your fifth pillar is team. Who’s been essential to you on your team as you’ve gone from one company to the other?

Ryan Tansom:

So mine is the boring logical team. I’m assuming you’re looking from the support structure and that is for sure my wife. ‘Cause my dad was going through his [inaudible 00:27:35] too. It had to be like two people drowning and trying to save each other. Where as in my wife, communication and her knowing that I was happier trying to figure out who I am outside of going and working a big job is huge. And allowed me to morph into what I’m doing now without being upset that I’m changing.

Sherry Walling:

How does she communicate her support for you?

Ryan Tansom:

Oh my gosh. I mean, we just talk a lot honestly. I work from home half the time when I’m doing shows like this or other calls and stuff. And knowing that we’ve got two one year old girl twins upstairs and that I don’t feel the guilt of that I have to go out there, and just knowing that I will work late some nights because I’m at events or doing a company party or whatever it might be and it’s part of the deal. I think it is that she knows that I will do whatever it takes to not have to do that. So it’s kind of the constant balance knowing that I’m not just using it as an excuse to not be around.

Sherry Walling:

There’s trust in your teamwork, right? There’s trust that she’s doing her thing for the family, you’re doing your thing for the family and you have some of the same end goals in mind and yeah, your trust that you’re building something together.

Ryan Tansom:

Yep. I don’t know how else you could do it. No chance.

Sherry Walling:

Yeah. How about your practical, boring team?

Ryan Tansom:

I’ve got pretty solid opinions about this. It’s whoever understands your whole picture. Maybe I’ll go into where we ran into challenges that I had to have an investment banker sitting there and they get paid to sell your company. Really just follow the motivations. Follow the money and you’ll find the motivations of all your professionals, whether it’s the CPA, they might be a wonderful person, but they get paid to do audits and to do tax returns. Your banker gets paid to do loans and to do deposits. Your attorney gets paid to bill. All these people, they might have some bigger picture but there’s a lot of lack of optimization behind that. I think realistically it’s starting with whoever you trust most and trying to explain to them what you’re trying to do. And hopefully that person will bring in the other people that’ll allow you to look at the whole picture, weigh the different opportunities and options next to each other.

Sherry Walling:

I do think this is a really hard thing about the sale of the business. It was definitely hard for us. Rob and I talked about this in the context of the sale of Drip and we recorded a couple podcasts about it about a year ago but it was very, very hard to trust the people at the table and to know whether what they were saying was legitimate or not. That even came down to Clay who was then the CEO of Leadpages, who acquired Drip. This sense of like, “Are you a good guy? Or not? You seem like you could be a good guy but we’re not sure so we’re kind of inclined not to believe anything you say.” Then a year later we know him and we’re like, “Yeah, you’re totally a good guy.” But you just don’t know at that point and I think that drives so much of the anxiety. Trying to figure out who is your trustworthy team is a major way to alleviate anxiety in the context of the sale.

Ryan Tansom:

You know my analogy is, when you’re trying to sell your company, you’re trying to continue running it while your selling it usually because you can’t stop doing either of them. My analogy that I give is, would you ever build a building without a blueprint or a budget? No, because I need to know how much I’m going to spend on this building. Call it a million bucks. Now you can back into all the materials and infrastructure you need to get to that. Then you would sit down with an architect that says, “Okay, do you want granite, do you not want granite? Do you want these appliances, not these appliances? Do you want an 80,000 dollar sunroof?” All these different things are weighed back and forth between the plan and the budget and then once you’re done with that, then you go hire the contractors, who then do the HVAC, the electrical, the plumbing because it falls in the context of the plan and the budget.

What happens I believe, which I fell victim too and it sounds kinda like you felt it. Was it stress? You’re also trying to be the general contractor of your sale, as well as running your company, as well as trying to sell your company. I think it’s trying to see who will weigh those decisions, which is again what our firm is trying to do. You might get less money if you sell to this company but your employees are going to be fine. Your investment banker might not want that ’cause it directly affects their commission. It’s being able to weigh all those different decisions. I think that’s huge.

Sherry Walling:

Yeah. Another thing I really like about what you’re doing and I think is really important is to help entrepreneurs go into the process with their eyes wide open about the possible ways that this might end. I don’t think that many of us think very much about that. I’ll tell you the truth, All systems go on ZenFounder. I’m building this little consulting company. I have no idea how it’s gonna end. I guess someday I’ll just shut it down. I don’t know, I haven’t thought about that. And I’m not trying to get free consulting from you but I do think that that’s a super, super important conversation for people to have in their heads from the beginning. Certainly earlier on so that they know their options and know their choices and I love that you and your team are helping people to think through that in a meaningful way. I think that’s, again, great information for people to have at the beginning.

Ryan Tansom:

Really it’s starting with the end in mind. That’s any plan is like that and a lot of us entrepreneurs don’t do that. We go and risk and mortgage everything and we go, “Let’s do this!”

Sherry Walling:

Right. Sell, sell, sell!

Ryan Tansom:

Right. One of my things in the speech is, Google Maps is one of the most powerful tools on the planet. What happens if you don’t plug in point B?

Sherry Walling:

You go nowhere.

Ryan Tansom:

Nothing. Literally nothing. It just sits there. That’s exactly the same thing. If you were to plug in a quick trip that you wanted to go to. The gas station. In between your point A and point B but you didn’t have it calibrated, you’re going to end up halfway across the US, potentially. If you know where you’re going and why, every decision, whether it’s emotionally or financially will make an impact on where you want to go because you’re able to put in a context of the grander plan. So, it’s thinking about what does it feel like to be at then end? How do I emotionally want to be? Who do I want to be around? What are the things I want to accomplish? And then back into all that.

Sherry Walling:

And it makes great sense and I think it does alleviate a lot of anxiety and sort of existential angst when you have some of those values laid out, as well as some potential options laid out for yourself.

Ryan Tansom:

And what you’re doing is mentally where do you want to be? Literally nothing can be done unless you emotionally and mentally know who you are and what you want. ‘Cause otherwise it’s all just a moot point.

Sherry Walling:

Yeah. So, thank you so much for talking with me. If people want to get in touch with you or they feel like they need some of your help and services, how can they find you? I know you also have a podcast so tell us where we can find that.

Ryan Tansom:

My podcast is called Life After Business. Hopefully, that seems now kind of fitting because it’s all of the stuff that I wish I would have known. And that is also on iTunes, Stitcher, it’s on my website, which is mysolidity.com. My cell phone is 612-720-6530. My email is ryan@mysolidity.com.

Sherry Walling:

Alright and we can put some of that info in the show note too so people can, if they didn’t write it down. If you’re driving. If you’re listening and driving, you can find it. It’ll be okay. Don’t worry, don’t crash. Thanks so much Ryan I appreciate it.

Ryan Tansom:

Thank you so much. Oh, I had a blast Sherry, absolutely.

Post navigation

PODCAST

Subscribe to Podcast

Sherry has a unique combination of experience and education that results in an ability to completely understand what founders go through generally, crossed with their personal foibles specifically. The result is truly helpful, not regurgitated pop psychology or the “coaches” who haven’t been there before themselves.